h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi, I'm MuseSusan (I'm new here too). I was just looking at the song line conversation, and I saw that you put "love, love changes everything". So I thought, "Wow, there's actually someone besides me who is putting down songs from musicals in this conversation! Yay!" (I am obssesive about musical theater.) So if you're interested and you want to talk about musicals, reply to this!
-MuseSusan

well,i love grease if that counts?and the sound of music,and west side story n mary poppins,hey this could go on 4 ever lol

I love all of those; I also love The Music Man, Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Les Miserables, Guys and Dolls, Fiddler on the Roof… Okay, I'd better stop. I love movie musicals, but I love musicals on stage even more. (I just moved to New York state to go to college, so I'm happy--nearer to Broadway!) I guess I'm just a musical theater geek . (Sorry I'm going smiley-happy here; I just learned how to do them .)

i cant do smileys as i am on a digibox,how is the big apple?i live in england myself.i read some of ur posts n u seem v intelligent

You live in England? (seething with envy) I would LOVE to go there. In fact, I would love to travel all over Europe. My friend Danielle and I have talked about that for soooo long, and we agreed that once we win the lottery, we'll go on a nice, long trip to England. (And of course, we'll see lots of musicals in London while we're there!)

New York is pretty cool, though I haven't actually been to New York City since I was about 7. But the city my college is in, Schenectady, is a small, old city that looks like it's dying and (I am told) has looked that way for decades. A lot of people complain that there's nothing to do here, but I disagree. We've got a number of theaters within walking distance of the college, a bus that takes us to the mall (except that the mall has NOT ONE SINGLE BOOKSTORE, which is horrible ), and movies every week at the campus center. Plus, the fall colors on the trees are gorgeous, and amazing to me because I come from a climate where the trees just turn brown. But here I've seen some lovely shades of red, orange, purple…It just blows me away. So overall, Schenectady is a pretty nice place once you get past the outward appearance, and I'm really happy to be here.

As for the smiley faces, I was poking around on H2G2 and found a link to Spicing Up Your User Page, which shows you how to add smileys, make links, change the font and color, etc. (That was my first link I ever made; hope it works!) I really don't know much about computers, but I've started to think that that's what I want to study in college, so I've started trying to experiment as much as I can with websites and programs. So far I haven't destroyed any important files or made the computer explode, so I think I'm on the right track.

So how is living in England? What do you do? How did you find out about H2G2?

Oops. I was trying to get that link to work, and I accidentally posted the message. Let's see if I can get it to behave now.

<./>SpicingUpYourUserPage</.>

Yay! It works!

well,i would love to see america u call this fall if im right?i love the colours and scrunching through the leaves. i dont have a computer, i come on here through my television on cable.someone sent me this site in an email.today i am mostly trying to give up smoking.its not easy!where you from originally?

I'm from Southern California. It's really nice, sunny of course (though we DO get rain, contrary to popular belief), but very different from New York. That's part of the reason I came here in the first place, to experience a different climate and culture.

so how are you getting on at cc ollege then?

hello?are you ok hun?

Hey, sorry I haven't responded for a while. Things are getting kind of busy here because finals are next week. So I've been studying for calculus and engineering finals as well as finishing the building of a walking robot that we had to build for a competition in my engineering class. (My team didn't win, but we did get the highest score in any one round.) Overall, being in college is great; the only problem is that it gets a bit loud at night when a bunch of people in my dorm decide to get drunk. So they're all out in the hallway talking loudly about how drunk they are, and it makes it hard to sleep. But it's not a big deal, because there are lots of nice places on campus where I can study and stuff.
My classes have been fun and I've learned a lot so far. This term I took vector calculus (very fun for me, because I know a lot about vectors from physics, but other people found it hard), intro to engineering (which was cool, especially our walking robot competition), and preceptorial (where we read a book each week and discuss in class). I like all my professors, and I'm glad to be at a nice small college where none of the professors make a big deal about formality. They all insist that I call them by their first names.
Well, anyway, I've got to go now, but I'll try and be back online soon.

what kind of robot did u build then?that sounds cool!i can relate to how u feel about other peoples noise as i live in a block of flats.in fact i think they had a party on the stairs last night.it sure sounded like it lol.what books have you been studying?

The robot we built is about 12x12x12 inches and made mostly of plywood and balsa wood. The idea was that the robot had to be able to walk (or basically propel itself without wheels) and be controlled by remote control (the controls were provided; we just had to wire the motors up correctly). It had to walk down a four-foot track and collect ping-pong balls off of six pivoting steel rods, then deposit them in one of two holes at the end of the track. The first hole was large and easy to reach, but the other hole was smaller and was behind a half-inch-high tripwire, and there was also a dowel with sharp nails sticking out all over it right between the two holes. You got more points for balls that went into the harder hole. There were two robots competing at a time, so they had to run down parallel tracks and then basically fight over the hole, because the big hole was pretty easy to block (although a few of the robots that competed were strong enough to push the other robot out of the way.
Basically, my team (three of us total) designed the walking mechanism so that we had one motor for each side (each motor could go forward or backward separately). Each motor spins an axle that has a piece on the end perpendicular to the axle, and the front leg is attached to the end of that piece, so that the leg moves in a circle while staying mostly upright. Then there is a piece of wood fixed to the front leg that is attached to the top of the back leg, which is in turn attached to the body of the robot at the middle of the leg. The circular motion of the front leg translates to horizontal motion of the back leg, which swings back and forth in such a way that it is only touching the ground during its backward swing. (I hope that made sense; its really hard to explain without pictures.)
Then, we had a two-pronged claw on each side of the robot, spaced as far apart as the constraints would allow, at the same height as the steel rods would be. I idea was that we could drive the robot straight down the center of the track and the claws would hook onto each rod and pivot it forward until they were catching the ball, and then the ball would pop off into a container that was directly below. The sides of the container are sloped such that the balls rolls towards one of two holes, on the front left and right of the container. Each hole leads to a v-shaped chute which then leads to a vertical tube. The important thing is that we had the final tube on one side of the robot, but it was changeable depending on which side of the track we were required to run on. This way, if we could get over the trip wire, we could easily angle the robot around the nails and manuver the tube directly over the harder hole. The tube ends in a hinged flap that drags on the ground and allows the tube to go over the tripwire without losing the balls. When the hole is open under the tube, the flap drops and releases the balls. We could set up the robot before each round, strapping the vertical tube to the correct side and using a sheet of balsa wood to cover up the unused hole. In the competition, we did extremely well in the first round, collecting all the balls and successfully dumping them in the far hole, all in less than two minutes and while the other robot was only halfway down the track. But in the next round, we were beaten because the other team knew our strategy and rushed to the finish line before us, then blocked our way so we couldn't get to either hole. Still, I'm actually more proud of our one perfect score than I would be if we had won the competition.

Sorry I got so long-winded. Its a habit of mine, especially when I'm talking about science and engineering. You shouldn't encourage me!

By the way, the night before the competition, I brought the robot back to my room and painted it, using white, black, and purplish-gray paints to make it look silvery. It turned out really cool!

So what do you do? Where in England do you live? How did you find out about H2G2? (I feel bad, talking about me all the time!)

thats ok hun,i like finding out more about u but i dont know the first thing about robots.sounds really cool tho.we have a programme here called robot wars n my son likes 2 watch it.i have 2 sons who are 11 n 2 n my eldest is special needs.i am studying english maths n french n i live in the midlands.some1 sent me this site in an email.i like 2 write,mostly poetry n i sometimes help out at a mental health drop in center.meant 2 b goin 2 church 2day but it is my grampys funeral 2morrow